AGM 2024

Poster by Gareth Howell

The 2024 Nottingham Hackspace Annual General Meeting will be held at 8pm on Tuesday the 10th of December 2024. The AGM will be held at The Carousel and also available on Zoom for those who are unable to attend in person. There is likely to be at least one item to vote on this year, meaning it’s important we have as many people attend in person as possible. Voting can only take place in person. Those attending by Zoom or cannot attend at all should nominate a proxy via HMS and inform their proxy of how they would like to vote. There are instructions describing how you can do this later in the page.

A formal agenda will be released and published by the 3rd of December. We’re hoping to give a recap of the past year, such as changes to minimum membership fees, membership numbers, team updates and progress on the new metalworking area.

• Agenda
• AGM 2024/Proxies

The Venue

Our friends at The Carousel will be hosting us for our AGM this year. Doors will open at 7pm so you can get a drink, chat and get settled before the meeting, which will start at 8pm. The Carousel is a short walk from the hackspace and offers a cosy, social atmosphere. Tea and coffee is included, and the bar will also be open. The Carousel can only host 45 people, please book using our Eventbrite event - a link will be sent out by email with the announcement. It would be great to see as many of you in person as possible!

The Carousel,

25 Hockley,

Nottingham,

NG1 1FH

Google Maps

To ensure as many people can attend as possible, the AGM will also be available via Zoom. The link for this will be emailed out prior to the meeting. Attendees via Zoom will not contribute to the quorum unless a proxy has been nominated who is attending in-person.

Proxy Voting

If you are unable to attend in-person, please designate another member to act as your proxy. Instructions on how to do this are available on the “Designate a Proxy” page on HMS. If there are items to vote on at the AGM, make sure to discuss your opinions on those items with your proxy and tell them how you wish your proxy votes to be cast. The agenda and items will be released before the AGM takes place as per the outlines below.

If you're a bit new or don't know anyone who is attending in person, please hop onto Discord and ask in general or the agm-24 channel. Alternatively, if you are happy for other people to contact you about being their proxy, please see AGM 2024/Proxies

Quorum

Our required quorum this year is currently 63 members attending as outlined in our constitution. This value is recalculated frequently and is based on your Voting Status on HMS. This is adjusted to “Voting Member” when you have accessed Nottingham Hackspace. Details of how to adjust your Voting Status are at the bottom of this page.

As per section 1.129 of our Articles of Association, if we do not have a total representation of a quorate amount of members (present and proxy voters) then we will not be able to conduct any business and will have to rearrange the AGM for another time. We want to ensure this does not happen so please make your best effort to attend.

Agenda

The agenda item submission process will be run the same as last year to allow discussions of items before finalising for an agenda where items cannot be altered. You can submit one or more agenda items to trustees@nottinghack.org.uk until midnight on the 24th of November. It is required that anyone submitting an item has the submission fleshed out enough to be able to present it during the AGM. It will also be documented on the Wiki with accompanying paragraph(s) to describe what the agenda item is intended to do, so that all can understand before the AGM what is being voted on.

Following the closure of the call for items, the Trustees will publish a draft of agenda items on the Wiki to allow for discussions of the items on Discord. This discussion period will be until midnight on the 1st of December. The Trustees want to solicit feedback during this period before an Agenda is finalised. Items can be rewritten in this time with agreement of the submitter. As usual the trustees then make a decision on agenda items being categorised as AGM, Members Meeting or Unsuitable. A Zoom meeting during this time period may be arranged to discuss some of these items if deemed necessary.

The final agenda will be sent out on the 3rd of December (7 days in advance of the AGM date) after which no changes to agenda items (including during the AGM itself) will be allowed. Items generally will be done on an “Aye”, “Nay” and “Abstain” vote. Discussion of the agenda items will depend on how many are submitted - please try and get all discussion done in the preceding discussion period however.

How To Change Your Voting Status

• Log on to the Hackspace Management System (HMS)
• Click the HOME button
• Click the green eye next to voting status to change to
  • Voting - You wish to be always counted as a voting member
  • Non-voting - You wish to be always counted as a non-voting member
  • Automatic - You wish HMS to manage this based on your RFID activity

If you mark yourself as a Voting member and cannot attend, consider nominating a Proxy on HMS via the "Designate a Proxy" page. This because being a voting member while not using the space increases the quorum for the meeting.